Saturday, June 18, 2016

This week's been rough, and I fear that's far from over. I can't speak much about why it was rough exactly, but I can say that the next couple months are very uncertain for me. At least I can take solace that in general, I'm in a good enough position to weather any storm. The stress is a killer, though.

Anyway, here's what I've painted in the last little while. They're primarily reddit gets drawn stuff, but there was one illustration in there (that didn't really turn out as well as I'd hoped - serves me right for diving right in, rather than doing my due diligence in thumbnailing and general preparation).

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

It's been a ridiculously long time since I last posted here. More than a year. And while it's been an eventful year, I haven't really done that much art-wise. I've done a handful of paintings, I've gotten into doing RedditGetsDrawn portraits, and I've done some doodles, but overall my time has been devoured by /r/ArtFundamentals, which since the time of my last post has evolved into a proper website, drawabox.com. It eats up a lot of my time, but I've been able to monetize it reasonably well, with both ad revenue and a patreon campaign.

Before I get into all of it, I'm gonna warn you - this is a really, REALLY long post and if you want to get to the art, jump all the way to the end.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Thursday, January 8, 2015

My past month's been pretty good. Moved to Halifax to work with a great team of people at Silverback Games. Generally it's not like you're going to speak ill of your coworkers in a public forum, but these people really are fantastic to work with, my bosses included.

Aside from that, the subreddit I started back in mid-August has really taken off. /r/ArtFundamentals now has just shy of 3000 subscribers (we should clear that mark by early next week, if not sooner), and I've been receiving five to ten homework submissions for critique daily. It's a hell of a lot of work to keep up with, especially while finding my way around a new job, but the feeling I get from seeing so many people improve from my suggestions, and put so much of their own effort into completing these exercises is without equal. I only worry that its growth is not sustainable in the long-term.

I'm contemplating different ways to approach changing its structure. Most of my options involve building a dedicated website for it, and if I do that, I'm inclined to take it all the way - pay proper designers, take the time to properly develop and test it, and also implement a business model that at the very least breaks even, and doesn't become a drain on my own bank account. I love teaching, but perhaps not so much that I'd go into the red over it. That said, I have no intention of ever charging for the lessons that I write, so I'd likely attempt to monetize the core service I've been offering - my (supposedly insightful) critiques.